The Cosmological and Teleological Arguments

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Throughout much of the short time that humankind has spent on this planet, few questions have been raised and torn apart as often as that regarding the existence of God. Philosophers throughout the ages have tackled this monumental issue, and some of them have gone so far as to try to prove the existence of God from a logical standpoint. Arguments for and against the existence of a Creator abound, but two of these stand above the rest. The first of these is the cosmological argument which while arguable, is unfortunately not entirely disprovable. Easier to argue against is the teleological argument, which actually can be broken down so quickly that one begins to question why it ever became popular in the first place. While neither one of these is guaranteed to convince a dedicated non believer, their interest as philosophical arguments is unquestionable. In the Western tradition of philosophy, the cosmological argument can be traced all the way back to Plato’s Laws. However, its first appearance as a fully formed argument appears in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas Aquinas was a Roman Catholic philosopher who lived in the thirteenth century, and had a phenomenal effect on Western philosophy. In his writings, he came to what he believed to be a basic proof for the existence of God. In summary, the argument stands as such: All things that exist must have beginning, and therefore a cause. The Universe as a thing which exists, must have had a beginning and therefore a cause. A dumbed down version of this is simply that no matter how far one chooses to go back, even before the Big Bang, the Universe had to have started at some point, so something had to coax it into existence. Supporters of the cosmological argument ... ... middle of paper ... ...od strong against the test of time. The cosmological argument for the existence of God is fundamentally flawed, but impossible to disprove by nature. The teleological argument for the existence of God is actually somewhat clever, but easily disprovable. Ultimately, neither philosophy nor science can ever definitively state whether or not God exists. God, if real, exists outside of the realm of what science can measure. Philosophy, while useful in the never-ending debate regarding the great possible being in the sky, is too speculative and this cannot be tested. Arguments for and against God’s existence have been around for a very long time and will likely be around either until God himself makes an appearance, or until the human race dies out. It is not our place to know whether or not there is some higher creative being than us, and personally I am okay with that.

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